09/09/2008



09/09/2008

INTERNET GIS

Dr. Zhong-Ren Peng

ASSIGNMENT - 1

Submitted by

Sai Sudha Vivekanandan

UFID 2321-7131

MS Geosensing Systems Engineering



Internet GIS applications in Urban Planning, Zoning, Land use and Tax Assessment

Urban, city, and town planning are the disciplines of land use planning that explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities. GIS is currently used by urban planners, engineers and surveyors to research, develop, implement and monitor their plans as they become carried out. There are many databases containing maps often created by USGS. Each municipality or organization has access to these databases and can add information which could include age structure data, population density, zoning, tax assessment, etc.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have been hailed in the popular press as revolutionary medium of communication for the next millennium. The Web is opening up new forms of computer-mediated communications, allowing for new forms of information dissemination, social interaction and collaborative working. This is particularly so for the planning community with the intense drive to develop GIS further in terms of widening and deepening access to spatial information along with appropriate analytical functionality within the network paradigm of the Web and the browser interface.

Taxonomy of Online Urban Planning System

| | |Functions and Interface |

|Contents |Content Level |Information Dissemination |Query |Interaction with Map |

|General Information |A |A1 |A2 |A3 |

|Orthophoto |B |B1 |B2 |B3 |

|Zoning |C |C1 |C2 |C3 |

|Tax Information |D |D1 |D2 |D3 |

Websites:

a) (Level C3)

Purpose: This website provides the base information (Townships, city/town, water), land information (zoning), infrastructure information (roads, highways, regional) and political information (voter’s districts) of Fulton County.

Targeted Audience: This serves to be useful for planners, general public and engineers who are involved in infrastructure development.

Pros: The positive features of this website are in addition to the common tools like zoom in, zoom out, it also has some useful tools like identify, tooltip, measure and add point of interest. All these features enable interactive mapping. Also, it has a overview window at the right-bottom corner which helps us locate our position in the whole area. It also provides the XY location of the area as the cursor moves through the map.

Cons and Improvement: The drawbacks of this site are that certain information like addresses, parcels, soils and orthophotographs are not available for the public to access. Though they are present, they are disabled. These need to be rectified to make the application better.

Internet GIS Software: The Internet GIS software used in this website is Mapserver. MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications. It can run as a CGI program or via Mapscript which supports several programming languages. MapServer is not a full-featured GIS system, nor does it aspire to be. Instead, MapServer excels at rendering spatial data (maps, images, and vector data) for the web. Beyond browsing GIS data, MapServer allows us to create "geographic image maps", that is, maps that can direct users to content.

b)(S(hf2hgi55gwuwvw55bue3u vf0))/Map.aspx (Level C1)

Purpose: Maptitude is a powerful combination of software and geographic data that provides everything we need to realize the benefits of desktop mapping and spatial analysis with a single, easy-to-use package. This website provides information about a variety of applications such as demographic, health, crime, environmental, political, education, etc for the state of Massachusetts. Out of these, the demographic, political, housing come under the roof of the urban planning, zoning, etc.

Targeted Audience: Maptitude Geographic Information System for Windows is the intelligent mapping solution for business, government, and education. The targeted audience are the municipality, general public, revenue department.

Pros: This application provides voluminous and detailed information in each of the topics.

City and Town: Massachusetts City and Town Boundaries, Massachusetts High School District Boundaries, Massachusetts State House District Boundaries Massachusetts State Senate District Boundaries Massachusetts Congressional District Boundaries

Economic data: Employment, Occupation, Industry, Household and Family Income, Poverty Status, Tax Rates, Tax Bills, and Revenue

There is a detailed legend given for each map. When clicked on the info tool and click on a map feature, it gives almost all possible information on it.

Cons and Improvement: Interactive mapping component is missing in this application. That is the user is not able to add a point of interest or measure anything. This site can be improved by adding these features.

Internet GIS software:

The Internet GIS software used to develop this application is Caliper Maptitude. Maptitude for the WebTM has all of the tools we need to create compelling and attractive maps, plus special capabilities for designing and running interactive web mapping applications and GIS web services on the World Wide Web. we can quickly create simple applications, without programming, by using an existing template and linking it to our geographic data. Experienced programmers can create complex web applications and web services by accessing a rich set of .NET classes and modifying the source code for the existing templates.

c) (Level B2)

Purpose: uThungulu is one of the 11 district municipalities ("districts") of KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. This web mapping application disseminates a variety of information such as towns, local municipalities, water pipelines, projects, census 2001, roads, etc. Uthungulu is an area requires urban development and this website lays the foundation upon which the projects can be built upon.

Targeted Audience: This website is very useful for Government bodies who decide upon the Urban development projects, engineers who implement them, surveyors who conduct geological surveys and the general public.

Pros: This website provides the map in different sizes. The major positive thing about this application is that it also provides the users with Orthophotos and Topomaps of the areas. There is also a search option given for the users where they can search for settlements, projects and schools with their respective names. Map legend can be turned on and off.

Cons: Interactive mapping is not available. Users cannot measure or add points to the map. These features can be added using the additional features of Asp. This is because enabling the users to make measurements will be very useful in planning real-time development projects.

Internet GIS Software: This application is built using AspMap. AspMap for .NET is a set of high-performance, Web mapping components and controls for embedding maps in and AJAX applications. AspMap gives you the ability to generate maps, drill-down capability, thematic mapping, routing, vehicle tracking and other features that - generated on the server - will make the maps fully interactive on the client-side.

d) eTypeID=1&PageID=916&Q=2059562312 (Level D3)

Purpose: Beacon™ is an interactive public access tool that allows users to view county/city information, records and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) via an online portal.

Designed to fill the gap between web-based GIS and web-based data reporting applications, beacon combines both features into a single, hybridized web application that is user friendly and designed with our client’s needs in mind. This webpage focuses on Cass County, IL.

* Beacon lowers GIS implementation costs and licensing fees

* Beacon provides 24/7 information access for the public and internal users

* Beacon can integrate virtually any database pertaining to land records and more

Targeted Audience: Beacon helps make other public information available to users by integrating public databases pertaining to assessment, CAMA, tax, real estate, cemetery records, document management, utility billing systems, and more. Hence, it is useful for organizations involved in urban planning, tax assessment, revenue departments, etc.

Pros: There are different features that are useful for urban planning like corporate limits, political townships, parcels, zoning, taxing districts, drainage districts, ward districts, etc. The presence of legend and overview window improves the usability of the application. Interactive mapping like measure tool is also available.

Cons and Improvement: The option for user to add a point or mark a location is not given. The rectification of this might improve the site. Also, the latitude and longitude of the map can be displayed as the cursor moves over it.

Internet GIS Software: This website uses ESRI’s ArcIMS software. ArcIMS is the solution for delivering dynamic maps and GIS data and services via the Web. It provides a highly scalable framework for GIS Web publishing that meets the needs of corporate Intranets and demands of worldwide Internet access. ArcIMS services can be used by a wide range of clients including custom Web applications, the ArcGIS Desktop, and mobile and wireless devices. Using ArcIMS, city and local governments, businesses, and other organizations worldwide publish, discover, and share geospatial information.

e) (Level D2)

We need to download the Autodesk MapGuide Viewer from this page and then click on “Sauk County GIS” button and from the 5 different maps, choose the “Sauk County Tax Parcel Information”.

Purpose: The Sauk County Mapping Department, also being the Land Records Contact Office between the State of Wisconsin Land Information Board and Sauk County is to develop base and property mapping for Sauk County's geographical information system, to provide all departments with modernized land records, all townships and villages with accurate assessment mapping and assist the general public with related professional services through the use of technical software and computers.

Targeted Audience: The targeted audience of this application is the various departments that deal with the land records, revenue departments dealing with tax assessment and the general public.

Pros: The main advantage of this application is that it allows the user to query based on different criteria like address, fire number, land class, owner name, parcels, etc. The presence of orthophotographs of 2005 and 2001 years is of great advantage.

Cons and their Improvement: Interactive mapping is absent. Autodesk mapguide viewer has to be installed in order to view the maps. Only Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator supports this application. It is not compatible with Mozilla Firefox. Instead of having to install individual viewer, it would be better to have maps readily available to view, as in the case of other softwares.

Internet GIS Software: The Internet GIS Software used here is AutoDesk Mapguide. MapGuide Open Source is a web-based platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure. MapGuide includes an XML database for managing content, and supports most popular geospatial file formats.

SCREENSHOTS

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b)(S(hf2hgi55gwuwvw55bue3uvf0))/Map.aspx[pic]

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